WASHINGTON – Former Washington Post executive editor Benjamin Bradlee said yesterday that he can’t believe Deep Throat’s identity stayed hidden for more than 30 years.

“The thing that stuns me is that the goddamn secret has lasted this long,” said Bradlee, who edited the paper during Watergate. Bradlee and Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein confirmed that W. Mark Felt, a former No. 2 official at the FBI, was Deep Throat.

Woodward decided to break his long-standing vow that Deep Throat’s identity would not be revealed until after he died despite skepticism about whether Felt, 91, was competent to decide to change the ground rules of their secret relationship.

Woodward said he is writing an article for tomorrow’s newspaper that will provide a personal account of his and Bernstein’s experience in covering Watergate.

Bradlee, in an interview published last night in The Washington Post, said that knowing that Deep Throat was a high-ranking FBI official helped him feel confident about the information. “The No. 2 guy at the FBI, that was a pretty good source,” Bradlee said.

Although he knew the source’s identity, Bradlee said, “I’ve never met Felt. I wouldn’t know him if I fell on him.”

Woodward said Felt helped the Post at a time of tense relations between the White House and much of the FBI hierarchy.

He noted the Watergate break-in came shortly after the death of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and that Felt and other bureau officials wanted to see an FBI veteran succeed him. Felt himself had hopes that he would be the next FBI boss, but President Nixon instead tapped an administration insider.